My Light, My Salvation

Photo Credit: Kaddish Abramowitz. My husband’s parents, Kalman and Bracha Abramowitz, a”h, on the cobblestone streets of Tzfat.

I wanted to thank my dear brother-in-law Kaddish Abramowitz for providing the biographical details in this story.

In his late forties, Kalman Abramowitz completely lost his vision in the right eye. Besides four other ailments from which he suffered, including a tumor in one ear, this particular disability was a big blow to him, in his personal avodah and life pleasure. Kalman loved davening for the amud every Shabbos and Yom Tov and served as a wonderful chazzan every year on the Yomim Noraim. Additionally, it became increasingly difficult for him to lein the parshah on a weekly basis, as he began to lose vision in the left eye as well, due to an exacerbated cataract, which eventually rendered him legally blind.

In Tzfat, where he lived for 19 years after moving from Brooklyn, Kalman walked to ten shuls across town every Shabbos morning—varying from the Arizal to Kosov and Chabad—where he leined, each in a slightly different nusach, gracing the Kehillah with his precision and heartwarming voice. As his eyesight worsened, along with additional physical problems, Kalman never stopped thanking HaShem for all the goodness with which He gifted him, as he continued to focus on his beautiful blessings.

As he learned to rely much less on seeing and more on his other senses, this precious man fumbled down the cobblestoned streets of Tzfat to get to and from shul, and to run light errands for his wife Bracha. Indeed, Kalman Abramowitz was a dedicated father and husband in spite of his disability.

Surprisingly, at an advanced age, he and his wife bore a final child, their ben zekunim, whom they named Chaim—“life”—and upon whom they showered much affection.

When Chaim was a young boy and had to catch the bus to Yeshivah, Kalman, with all his aches and pains and lack of visual clarity, hoisted his delighted son onto his shoulders and carried him all the way up the hill to greet his classmates and bus driver—so that his little legs wouldn’t tire.

As many would not know, since he was a very modest man, Chaim’s father was not only a tzaddik and a ba’al middos, he was an ilui, who when growing up had learned closely under the tutelage of R. Yaakov Kaminetsky in Torah Voda’as, as well as R. Shmuel Birnbaum of the Mir.

A well-rounded bachur, living in the Jewish homeland of Brooklyn, New York, Kalman had enjoyed an energetic game of basketball with his peers every week in Brownsville and was extremely athletic and social—far from a stow-away learner. He was well-integrated in his community, looking out for his friends and for opportunities to help an unfamiliar Jew, as he began his beloved career davening and leining on fire.

After one particular seder of learning, Kalman went to Rav Kaminetsky, asking him the meaning of the pasuk we recite in bentsching, ולא ראיתי צדיק נעזב וזרעו מבקש לחם, and I will not see a righteous man being left alone and his kids searching for bread. But, Kalman argued, he’s seen so many poor families of tzaddikim who seem to go hungry and don’t have enough food in their pantry! The Rav smiled quietly and explained in Yiddish, Kimps tzu di tisch v’nach esin, “you came into the room only when the table was empty.” That is, HaShem gives a righteous person everything he needs and you don’t necessarily see it.

This was a great lesson for Kalman to learn, in sensing the hand of Gd in all forms of suffering that would fall upon him. It was clear, decades later, that with all the physical pain and limitations which he experienced, HaShem always took care of him.

This consultation with his Rebbi against the backdrop of his vibrant, Torah-filled childhood were the humble origins of the fifty-five year old man, who was now lifting his giggling son towards the warm sunshine of Eretz Yisrael—as the delicious breeze tickled both their hairs and as if Kalman himself did not have a care in the world.

Fifteen years later, when he was no longer a child, Chaim had grown up to be just as wonderful and smiley as his father, understanding the importance of helping him in his old age, with all his illnesses.

For many years, Chaim saw his father struggling with a magnifying glass at the bimah, as he had already memorized the entire text from many years of experience. However, he did not want to become halachically disqualified from leining, if he were unable to visually discern one letter and word from the next.

So when Kalman turned seventy-two and had already moved to his children’s hometown in Lakewood after Bracha’s passing, Chaim successfully convinced him to attempt a cataract surgery in his left eye, where there was still much hope to restore vision. Even though cataract surgery is routine, and the risk of losing total vision in the operated eye is relatively minute, according to Kalman’s perspective, his life was on the line. Despite the low probability of a failed outcome, he was extremely anxious leading up to the day of his surgery.

Unbeknownst to Kalman or his son at the time, he had been connected with an excellent eye surgeon under his state insurance plan—one who was actually rated as one of the top five eye surgeons in the tristate area, whom people chose to consult with privately. Although he often felt that he was in Gd’s hands, Kalman did not yet appreciate in especially what good hands HaShem had just placed him.

On the day of the surgery, Kalman was a total mess, going nuts about the possibility of losing vision in both his eyes forever. Chaim tried to relax him, as he accompanied him to the doctor. In the operating room, Kalman became more fidgety as the nurse prepared him for the operation. Fortunately, his son managed to get him involved in a Ketzos that he had learned in Yeshivah just earlier that day. Such a complex commentary, the Ketzos helped keep Kalman distracted. Nonetheless, he got so fiery and excited about it to such an extent that the nurse felt compelled to kick his son out of the room for disrupting her patient’s emotional state.

An hour or so later, the doctor exited the OR, sharing with Chaim that the cataract was so unexpectedly thick that he was planning to utilize a specific kind of laser technology, reassuring Chaim that he wouldn’t have to pay out of pocket for this particular treatment. After the doctor went back in, Chaim looked down at his lap, tapping his foot on the hard linoleum, as he anxiously awaited his father.

An hour later, in the recovery room, Chaim held his father’s hand as he awoke with a black eye patch over one side of his face. They smiled at each other and after some resting time, together they walked to Chaim’s Yeshivah to continue their discussion on the Ketzos and to listen to the Rav’s shiur.

Alas, the next day, when Kalman was finally able to remove his eye patch, the first thing he exclaimed, after twenty-five years of being blind was “Chaim, your shirt is wrinkled!” Although his own clothing was mismatched and wrinkled, his son beamed at his revelation, as he swept his father into a hug, both crying tears of joy on the other’s shoulder.

Now, at seventy-two years old, Kalman was a new man! He could finally enjoy the beautiful world he knew he had been in this whole time—and he only needed reading glasses to enjoy his avodah once again. How was that! 

A couple of months later, after receiving one of the biggest blessings in his life, besides for the six children whom he cherished, finally the rest of Kalman’s ailments caught up to him. At his bedside, Chaim held his father’s hand for one final time, recited the Shema with him, and kissed him goodbye.

Fortunately, the Abramowitz family quickly arranged for his burial in the Holy Land, where he had once lived and unquestionably belonged in his resting place. His five sons flew to Eretz Yisrael the following day, on the first flight they could find—awaiting their sister Esti, who lived in Netanya—and later landed with the coffin on the fresh ground of Tel Aviv. As they drove their way towards the mountain where their father would be buried, the men did not realize what day it was. Only once the sirens blared and all the cars stopped on the highway, did they realize that they had arrived to Israel on Yom HaShoah.

The driver put on the breaks, as his passengers, along with thousands of others, dutifully piled out of their cars onto the road, put their heads down—their hands on their heart— as they remembered all the precious Yidden who had passed away tragically. As the coffin of a spectacular man, who himself once stood tall and solemn in front of a room full of prostrated people, lay quietly in the back of one vehicle, throngs of men and women paused their day for a minute in time.

Once the five brothers returned to their car and arrived at the Beis HaChaim, the children were up for another surprise, which albeit indirect, brought extra honor to their righteous father. Coincidentally, one of them had managed to buy a burial plot which stood right beside Rabbi Leib Ba’al Yesurim, a tzaddik and Gaon of centuries past, who suffered greatly in his life yet always sought to praise HaShem.

And further: The day Kalman’s family came to accompany him to his final resting place was the day of Rabbi Leib’s yahrtzeit, when crowds of people came to daven at his kever, as a designated segulah for all kinds of salvation. Being that they were only five men, Chaim and his brothers were no longer concerned about having a proper minyan for the levayah.

As he recited Tehillim and his siblings weeped, conjuring all the sweet memories they had had with their father, Chaim hoisted Kalman’s fragile body over his shoulder—just as his father had done for him years earlier—this time with tears not of laughter, but with the same love and adoration he had always held for his unbelievable role model.

Lowering him down into the plot and squaring back his shoulders, Chaim took one final look at the reverent man who had taught him, by his own example, what it means to know a blessing when you see one—and that if the table looks empty, it means that at some point, it was once full.